Capturing video and audio

This page of the Video Capture Wizard displays when you are capturing content live or from tape and lets you choose options for the content you are capturing.

You can choose to start and stop capturing individual parts of video manually. For example, you might want to capture only certain parts of a video tape. In this situation, you can capture a part of the tape, stop capturing, locate the next part you want to capture, and then begin capturing again. This reduces the amount of unnecessary video that is captured to your computer. Regardless of the number of times you start and stop capturing video, the captured video is saved as one video file in the location specified on the Captured Video File page of the wizard.

The following options and information appear on this page.

Start Capture

Click to begin capturing audio and video to your computer.

Stop Capture

Click to end capturing audio and video to your computer.

Video captured

Displays the amount of time elapsed for the current capture in the form of hours:minutes:seconds (h:mm:ss) by default. Timing starts when capturing begins and stops when capturing ends.

Size of video file

Displays the file size, in kilobytes (KB), as the video is being captured. If you have time or space restrictions for your captured content and your final movie, you can use the timing information in Video captured.

Estimated disk space available

Displays the estimated amount of disk space that is available (in gigabytes (GB) or megabytes (MB)) for capturing video with audio at the currently selected video setting.

Create clips when wizard finishes

Specifies whether the captured video is divided into clips when it is saved and imported into Windows Movie Maker. Creating clips separates captured video into manageable sizes. How clips are created is determined by the video capture device your video is captured from. For example, if you are capturing from a DV device, a clips are created based on time stamp information set by the DV camera when the video is originally recorded. However, if you are capturing from an analog device, such an analog camera or Web camera, a clip is created when there is a substantial change in one frame of the video compared to the next frame.

If you don’t choose to create clips, the video appears as one large clip when you finish capturing.

Mute speakers

Specifies that you want to mute the speakers and all audio output lines that are connected to the audio card on your computer. Muting the speakers prevents audio from being played back on the speakers, which can distract from the video and audio you are capturing.

If you clear this check box, audio such as any background music or other sounds from your computer that are played back over your speakers may be heard and captured if you are capturing live content.

Capture time limit

Specifies whether there is a capturing time limit. If this box is selected, capturing stops automatically when the specified time limit elapses. If this check box is cleared, you must stop capturing manually. You should then monitor the capturing so you can stop capturing at the time you want if you don’t select a maximum capture time. Time is displayed in the form of hours:minutes(h:mm).

For each video segment you capture for which the time limit expires, the time displayed for Video captured is reset.

Digital video cameras controls (DV only)

Provides buttons to control your DV camera from your computer. You can click the DV controls to play, pause, stop, rewind, fast-forward, or to move forward or backward by individual frames. You can use these controls when your DV camera or DV VCR is connected to an IEEE 1394 port, and the DV camera or VCR is in the playback position to capture taped video and audio to your computer.

Note

• When capturing video from a DV camera, verify that the camera is in either VCR or Camera mode. Capturing video or pictures while the camera is in a mode to take still pictures is not supported.
• When recording in Windows Movie Maker, the limit on the size of an individual captured file depends on the amount of hard disk space you have available and the file system format you are using. The file size limits for the different file system formats are shown in the following table.

Related topics

• Using the DV controls
• Capturing video